


Learning To Swim

by Mssilverwoods



Category: The Durrells (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mild Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-24 21:13:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22004533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mssilverwoods/pseuds/Mssilverwoods
Summary: He has become natural, indeed, sexual. Very unlike the friend she has seen him as previously, his body ghostly under the glittering waves.
Relationships: Louisa Durrell/Spiros Halikiopoulos
Comments: 3
Kudos: 32





	Learning To Swim

Louisa would never claim to be a competent swimmer. The English channel was too cold and she grew up in an age when costumes were for covering, not movement. Restrictions everywhere. She recalls elderly relatives discussing bathing machines, bundled out of sight and hidden from view. Mixed bathing was considered to be the behaviour of harlots and wanton women. She never swum with Sven or Hugh.

She felt silly, nervous and worried then, the first time she threw herself into the Corfuit sea with him watching. Spiro, who moves in the water like a seal. Born with the water that surrounds his island. Her incompetent paddling and his telling look of affection, persuaded her to do better.

How does she know that he is a natural? This very beach, that's how. She saw him, returning from town, pausing on the stone lane, carrying a heavy basket and cursing the lack of a taxi. Where is the man when you needed him most? Well, perhaps not the most, that’s later in the midnight hours. Either way she hides behind the trees wondering if she ought to say hello. 

She averts her eyes when she sees his clothes abandoned by the stones, terribly sure that her blush is visible to him. A quick, irresistible glance and she can almost see his body, ghostly beneath the water. She’s more than used to male nudity but this… it’s not like the reliable friend she knows. He has, unwittingly, become natural, sexual and she’ll never be able to see him in the same soft light. She dashes away as he dives from view.

In the weeks that followed his wife’s return, she battled dreamless nights, woken by visions of him in his faceless wife’s arms, feverishly coming to earthy joy with someone she has never met, yet controls their actions. Abandoning her bed of thorns, she tested the open waves, feet first and shivered, hoping for the comfort she briefly found after the loss of Lawrence. Cautiously dressed in a modest costume. She found some solace. Her tears mingled with the lap of the tide. To know Spiro had been here and shared this body of water, brought comfort. These tiny atoms of water had touched him and now caressed her skin too.

In the worst of days when Louisa had barely seen him, her dreams were tormenting her. Fearing her eyes would close and she’d scream his name to all who could hear, she raced down the path in her night-gown under the light of a full moon. She tore the cotton from her body, desperate for the cool waves to bring her peace, to ease the longing. To cool the heat that burns from her when she thinks of him, here.

She dives in, head falling with her chest, causing her to gasp and then she slips down. Against the tide, push and pull. Push. Push. Slipping and sliding. Dragging her arms back until her shoulders burn with pleasure. Her body asserts itself over her restless mind until she sees him watching her. His hair at all angles, his face shocked. And then she sees a desire that’s never been directed at her in this way. Not by him, like that, as if she is the moon and all the stars.

His arms surround her, moving to her waist to lift her, his lips tasting salt. Diamonds of moonlight bubbles trail from his shoulders as she reached to touch him, her fingertips on his naked skin for the first time. 

The talking of loss and love isn’t necessary, he knows that she’s lived with chasity as a widow, that her dreams are fiction for she knows he sleeps alone. Another one of those soft conversations when they had hope. 

She anticipates what will follow with a shiver. He doesn’t need to ask her permission and she doesn’t need to ask his. Her hands do not look like hers, as she grips his back, holds him tight as he slips into her, but she feels him, has his soul. The shock of electric as he rises with her causes her to utter his name. Spiro. He gasps hers in reply. Louisa. Not Mrs Durrells, not now. She's no more. Push. Push. Slipping and sliding. Each finding an anchor in this sea of longing.

The sleepless nights lose their footing, stumbling as she stands beside him, cautiously in the daylight, on a different beach beside a boat, agreeing to be friends. As the nights turned into days, she finds him as her lover. Turning and rolling in the water, not remembering how impossible she once had thought it to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Something I thought of when I was swimming, and how it’s helped me in times of sorrow. Not very long but I thought I’d share it and maybe see if it leads to something else. Thank you in advance for kudos and comments.


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